


curiosity

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Animal Abuse (mention), F/M, Gen, Kittens, Murder (mention), Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 03:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20351872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Cersei is the one who saved the kittens.





	curiosity

**Author's Note:**

> written 22 August 2019.
> 
> *
> 
> Joffrey is about eleven years old here. i shifted some things on the timeline.

Cersei is the one who saves the kittens.

Fuming, furious, she tells her brother what Joffrey did to the pregnant cat — and Jaime only shrugs. “Curiosity,” he calls it, and smiles his laziest at her: “We had a different outlet, at that age.”

She pushes at him. “This isn’t a joke. Neither one of us butchered animals and left them lying around.”

(_Melara, _she thinks. But that was different, the girl needed to learn her place.)

Jaime shrugs. “Joffrey is only a boy.”

Cersei presses her lips together. She shouldn’t — frowning causes wrinkles — but she will either do this or scream and scream and she cannot cannot _cannot_ yell, not at Jaime. Never at him. He doesn’t like her voice raised, he doesn’t like her to be angry, and who will she have if he leaves? What use is Robert — a stinking, rutting husband?

Emptiness and salt: that’s what life is without Jaime nearby.

“Joff is old enough to kill,” she says. “He’s old enough to be punished for it.”

Her twin gives her a searching look and doesn’t answer.

She was eleven when Melara died. Jaime was eleven. They were the same, always the same. Old enough to attend the funeral and express their shock and grief and sympathy. Old enough to know not to look at each other, same eyes into same eyes.

Later that day she’d come to his room and tumbled into his bed, whispering things into his ear that made him whimper and beg and come hard inside her body.

Unintended consequences. She’d sworn at him and pushed him away while he smiled, and she crossed every finger and prayed in hot desperation until her blood came again the next month. (How could she brew moon-tea? Who could she trust to make it for her?)

_The worms will claim your maidenhead,_ the old witch had said to Melara. _Not the lion._

But Cersei — Cersei had him. Reckless and sweet and oh so young, her beautiful brother.

“You worry too much,” said Jaime now. His mouth was hot on her neck.

“Only because you do not worry at all.”

He laughed aloud, moving down to her breast. “What is there to worry over? We have all the money in the world, all the time ...”

“You’re such a fool,” she told him. “If I had been a man ...”

She’d have Robert’s head on a pike, for one. She would have Joff stripped and whipped. 

She would fuck Jaime against the wall, wrapping his legs around her body while he writhed.

And she would have never been married to Robert like a brood mare set out in a field. _I am a Queen, I am mother to princes, I am ..._

“Tommen has new kittens,” said Jaime, suddenly. “Did you see them yet?”

“No.”

“You should see them. Talk to him. Play with the little lions. He needs more parental attention — more than he gets from his dear uncle Jaime.”

“Don’t talk about them right now.”

So Jaime finds other things to do with his mouth. 

But he is right, too: so later that day she visits their son.

Tommen is small and plump and so dear, good-natured, kinder than herself or Jaime either; she doesn’t know where he came from. (Where did Joffrey come from? or Myrcella? She looks at them and can’t trace the line of personality, it shatters at once. The only person she is certain of is Jaime. He is the only one, forever. And even to him she must be careful.)

The kittens are barely weaned, stiff-tailed, tottering. All fur and confidence.

“What did you name them?” she says.

“Boots,” says Tommen, pointing. “Lady Whiskers. And that’s Ser Pounce.”

Even Cersei has to smile.

“Love them,” she tells him. “Treat them kindly.”

Unneeded words. Tomm is already in love, and his hands have never been anything but gentle.

Joffrey needs a different sort of conversation.

Cersei sits on his bed while he looks out the window and pretends to ignore her.

The scream lodged in her throat is more difficult to ignore. 

She loves her son and yet more than once has wanted to wrap her hands around his neck. She suspects Joffrey feels the same about her. She thinks he would try to do it, if he dared.

She will not allow him to dare. She says, “Your brother has new cats — small kittens. You will not touch them.”

He sniffs. “I wouldn’t come near them for gold.”

“Do you understand me, Joff?”

He swings around. He has the Lannister eyes and mouth and hair and smile; he looks so much like Jaime at that same age ... but his expression is pure Baratheon. He says: “What will you do, if the little rats happen to drown? Or if they’re carved up,” he says, “and served to Tommy for supper. They’d go well with a white sauce, wouldn’t you say?”

Cersei doesn’t answer. She lets the emptiness fill up before she stands, smoothing down her dress.

She’s still taller than him, thank the gods. Joff is the sort who will never see past height — beauty — a crown. Someone will stab him or poison him or gut him in a courtyard, some day, when he is King Joffrey.

Cersei can only hope that she herself is dead before it happens.

She says to him now: “If you hurt Tommen, I can’t tell you what I’ll do. I don’t myself know the answer to that. But I promise that you will regret every single tear you make him cry.” She pauses. “Am I understood?”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, mother.”

And was she wrong? because the hatred on his face is pure Lannister. How often has she seen that expression on her father, or on Tyrion?

Again she hears Melara‘s screams as she went into the well, the dull thump and splash when the girl hit bottom. She has never stopped hearing it.

“That is all,” Cersei says, and leaves.

It takes a long time for her hands to stop shaking.

**Author's Note:**

> Cersei is not my favorite character for many many reasons, but she is marvelously complex.  
She is no Joffrey.
> 
> *
> 
> technically Margaery gives Tommen the kitties when she comes to marry Joffrey (because of course she does) — but fuck canon, eh?
> 
> *
> 
> as ever, thank you to Holograms for the title & the conversations.


End file.
